So, this is important:

This is what I remember, and how I remember it—although I’ve changed some names, and amalgamated some people, and some places.

I’m certain that some people in this book remember things differently, or remember things I don’t remember. Some people probably have no recall of events that are vivid, and crucial, to me.

I’m scared not just of subjectivity, but of losing people I love.

In life, I’m meticulously honest, but my default is to feel like a fraud. I walk through customs thinking I’ll get busted for drugs I’m not carrying. I walk out of stores afraid to be caught with things I haven’t stolen. So, of course, I’m terrified of a common scenario: a memoirist is dogged, exposed, and denounced.

I’m telling my memories with scrupulous precision, while scared that the mind is unreliable. Maybe every person on the planet is equally susceptible to errors and contortions of remembrance—whether or not they consider their minds to be suspect. Does that make memory itself an act of imagination?